No Jeffrey Epstein Or Charlie Kirk Miis For ‘Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream’ As Nintendo “Place Restrictions On Certain Image Sharing Features”
While many a shitposter or edgelord would undoubtedly see the upcoming Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream as yet another platform to be plastered with memes featuring convicted prostitution facilitator Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, late convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, or late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, a commitment to keeping their offerings “welcoming and enjoyable for everyone” has led Nintendo to place “restrictions” on some of Mii-centric game’s image sharing options.
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The third entry in the overall Tomodachi series and the first for the Switch/2, Living the Dream follows in its predecessors footsteps and tasks players with serving as the omniscient keeper of a city exclusively populated by Miis, the customizable avatars featured on every Nintendo console since the Wii.
However, rather than directly decide their fates, players will instead offer them guidance on their various endeavors, which in turn leads to the game’s core gameplay experience of ‘watching as your Miis’ day-to-day lives unfold, often in humorous ways’.
With said avatars being central to the series’ core identity, the release of 2013’s Tomodachi Life for the 3DS saw the addition of online Mii sharingm, which allowed for players to freely share their own unique creations with the general public via uniquely generated QR codes.
This system also seeing use in the Tomodachi spin-offs Miitopia and Miitoma, a scan of these codes would immediately add its representative Mii to a player’s personal library, no assembly required.
Given this sharing mechanic’s emphasis in past entries, fans were taken aback when a new entry to Nintendo’s official support materials revealed that the feature had been ripped wholesale from Living the Dream:
“Nintendo aims to create experiences where players have the freedom to enjoy their Mii characters in their own way. In Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, this freedom can sometimes lead to humorous, surprising, or unpredictable moments during gameplay. While these moments are often fun for players, we recognize that out-of-context scenes may be misunderstood or may not reflect the spirit in which the game is intended to be enjoyed.
“Nintendo is committed to creating experiences that are welcoming and enjoyable for everyone. To support this commitment, and in consideration of the unique gameplay in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, we have decided to place restrictions on certain image sharing features. These limits help to make the worlds players create in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream remain fun and safe, and that the game can be enjoyed comfortably by all players.
We understand that some players may find these restrictions limiting. However, they reflect Nintendo’s ongoing philosophy of creating experiences that bring smiles to everyone who plays.”
While an unarguably frustrating development for players and done without any further explanation from Nintendo as to their exact motivations, an educated suggests that it might have something to do with the rise in casual social media content featuring specifically controversial real-world figures, which has recently been thrown into overdrive after the general public was granted widespread access to generative AI engines.
From memes, to parodies, to lessons on the quadratic formula, the larger internet is currently gripped by content which regularly sees appearances from not only the aforementioned trio of Diddy, Epstein, and Kirk, but also others including American President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, Infowars founder Alex Jones, and Twitter/X CEO Elon Musk.
And while much of this content is admittedly meant to mock its featured subjects, for a company whose ‘family friendly’ image is paramount to their overall operations, it’s easy to see why they’d rather just go out of their way to prevent any related headaches all together.
Developed for the Nintendo Switch (and thus playable on the backwards compatible Switch 2), Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is currently set for a worldwide release on April 16th.
